Missouri Close to Passing Muni Broadband Restrictions
Missouri House and Senate legislators entered conference Thursday on a traffic citations bill that could include restrictions on municipal broadband. On Monday, the Missouri House grafted text of a bill restricting municipal broadband deployment (HB-2078) onto the unrelated Senate bill…
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(SB-765). The Republican sponsor of HB-2078, state Rep. Lyndall Fraker, put forward the muni measure as an amendment to SB-765, which had come up for a vote in the House after passage in the Senate. The House passed the amendment Monday 106-36, but on Tuesday the Senate refused to concur with the amended legislation, forcing the two legislative bodies to move to conference. The amendment would prohibit local governments from providing a communications service that competes with one or more service providers in the jurisdiction. The measure includes exemptions for local governments that already offer muni broadband; areas where competitive service isn’t offered to 50 percent of addresses by “any combination of service providers”; muni plans where the fiscal impact of providing the service is less than $1 million over the first five years; and areas where a business requests 1 Gbps service and no other service providers can supply it. The local government could also offer muni broadband if a majority of voters approve the plan, but the municipality would first have to release a cost-benefit analysis. Fraker expects the legislative conference to wrap up by Monday, he told us in a Facebook message. “I don't think citizens should have to subsidize the expansion of broadband through raising water, sewer or electric rates [especially] if private companies are already providing this service. But if the citizens would have a chance to vote on this then that's OK.” But Christopher Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance director-community broadband networks, condemned Fraker’s proposed law. “Representative Fraker is using political tricks to push his anti-competition laws through the Missouri legislature,” he said in a statement. “Missouri people and businesses deserve to have a choice in Internet providers.” In an email, Mitchell added, “I continue to find it unfathomable that in 2016, states would discuss how to limit investment in next-generation networks rather than encouraging it. Communities should have the authority to make these decisions themselves without a state effectively granting monopolies to companies like AT&T that cut big checks to the political party in power.” AT&T didn’t comment.